Gore pays for photo after Canada didn't

TORONTO - For Al Gore's presentation yesterday to a conference of human resources executives, his second Toronto visit in a month, the Oscar-winning envirogelical recycled just about everything from his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

From his opening line -- "I used to be the next president of the United States" -- through the Churchill quotes, the slick computer graphics and the boiling frog analogy, to his rousing finale, the presentation was a live action carbon copy of the film.

But there was one notable addition, an iconic photograph that was distributed worldwide last month by Canada's Environment Ministry, and for which the Canadian government is about to be sued by an Alaskan photographer.

The photo, taken in summer, shows two polar bears on a melting ice floe in the Beaufort Sea, north of Barrow, Alaska.

"Their habitat is melting... beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet," Mr. Gore said, with the photo on the screen behind him. "They're in trouble, got nowhere else to go."

Audience members let out gasps of sympathy, but there could only have been a handful who had never seen it.

On Feb. 3, the day after the United Nations issued its major climate change report, the photo was published in hundreds of newspapers.

It appeared on the front pages of The New York Times and Boston Globe, The Times and The Guardian in the U.K., the International Herald Tribune, and various others in Canada and around the world. Since then, it has been reproduced countless times, usually credited to Dan Crosbie of the Canadian Ice Service.

"It's not our picture," said Denis Simard, a spokesman for Environment Canada, who was in Paris for the UN report's release and co-ordinated the photo's distribution to news agencies.

"The pressure was a little hard on us," he said. "I had three newspapers in London asking the same questions: Is it your picture? Can we use it? Is it real? I gave them the permission because Dan said it was his picture."

The photo was taken in August, 2004, from the Louis S. St-Laurent, Canada's flagship icebreaker, and downloaded onto a shipboard shared computer. Mr. Crosbie, an ice service specialist and avid photographer, was present at the time, and had been taking pictures of his own.

Some months later, he recovered the photo from his computer files and gave it to Environment Canada to illustrate an online magazine. He thought nothing more of it until Feb. 2, when Mr. Simard e-mailed him to say that some news agencies were concerned it had been faked in some way. His response was that it had not.

"It's just too cute to be true," Mr. Simard said. "You have to keep in mind that the bears are not in danger at all. It was, if you will, their playground for 15 minutes, you know what I mean? This is a perfect picture for climate change, in a way, because you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die, with a Coke in their hands. But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim... They are still alive and having fun."

Environment Canada did not charge news agencies for use of the photo. "We don't do that. This is the government of Canada," Mr. Simard said.

Amanda Byrd, the editor of Mushing, a dogsledding magazine in Fairbanks, Alaska, was also on board the Louis S. St-Laurent in 2004, and says she took the photo. In an interview yesterday, she said Environment Canada "distributed it to seven agencies without my consent. They were amicable, but it's under legal action right now."

She has not filed a lawsuit, but has hired a lawyer to pursue a breach of copyright case. She does not accept the government's explanation that it was "an honest mistake."

Mr. Simard said the ministry agreed to distribute a correction, identifying Ms. Byrd as the photographer, which appeared in several major newspapers.

"We had to make it known we are sorry, that it was a mistake and we didn't want to steal your picture," Mr. Simard said.

Ms. Byrd said she learned of the mixup on Feb. 3, when her parents called to say her photo was in the Australian papers. She said they were "furious," because they had already received a copy of the photo as a gift. She had no idea that it had already been on the Environment Canada Web site for several months. It was still there last night.

She said she was flattered when Mr. Gore approached her and offered to pay for use of the photo.

"The image is an icon. It's definitely pulled the heartstrings of people and it says a lot, in itself. But I don't have really any opinion myself on what the image says," she said. "I don't know what happened to the bears after that... They migrate over 100 miles, swimming."

She now charges newspapers US$500 for use of the photo on inside pages, and US$700 for the front.

In Canadian courts, a photographer can be awarded as much as $20,000 for each instance that one of their photos is published without permission.

The use of the photo might have gone unnoticed by the general public if Mr. Gore had had his way. As per his usual request, media were barred from attending his presentation yesterday, but the National Post attended anyway.

He was introduced by federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion, who praised Mr. Gore for "shaking the foundations of our complacency, smashing down the barricades of disbelief, and puncturing the smug confidence of denial."

"If the state of Florida [which cost Mr. Gore the 2000 election] counted votes with the same precision as the Academy [which awarded Mr. Gore the Oscar for best documentary], we would live in a very different world today," Mr. Dion said.

Later, at a news conference, Mr. Dion declined to elaborate, even to say whether the world would be better. "You may guess my answer," he said.

"By harnessing the power of the market, we can beat climate change, and reap the economic rewards," Mr. Dion said in his introduction. Canada will become a "green energy superpower," and when it does, "we will have this man to thank, the Honourable Al Gore."

Mr. Gore said it was "a balm to my heart" to hear Mr. Dion speak so forecefully about climate change, having spent Wednesday in Congress being grilled over his activism.

He also declared himself "a big David Miller fan," and got laughs by addressing the Mayor by his honorific, "your Worship." Afterward, Mr. Gore and Mr. Miller chatted about ice cover on the Great Lakes, while Mr. Dion stood politely by.